The Artist's Mind

Jim Steinman On..

Writing - Everything I do is dictated by the dramatic - by the fact
that it's a character singing in a dramatic situation. I try to be incredibly true to that
and I think that gives [the songs] a real urgency and a precision that ultimately is very
powerful. Every song I write, I write with a theatrical or cinematic context in mind. I've
never written a song where I don't visualize a character singing it. That's just the way I
work - I couldn't write any other way. So in my mind, it's always on a stage or in a film.

Meat Loaf - It's amazing on a intuitive level, the fact just that he
understands these songs. We have such different backgrounds, he and I. Such different
lifestyles. We are totally different people - completely. But somehow, within the music,
we connect on a level that's pretty strange - because we're so different...Meat is a
performer serving a song - and he'd be the first to say that. That's one of the reasons
he's such a great performer. He does put the song, at his best, above his own personality
or ego or anything.

I'd Do Anything For Love - I started off this whole album with an
image of Meat Loaf on stage. For some reason, I started off with a live show image. I'd Do
Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) was the first song I wrote for [Bat II] and it was
definitely a 'Beauty And The Beast' kind of story...What he 'won't do' is said about six
times in the song very specifically. It's sort of is a little puzzle and I guess it goes
by - but they're all great things. 'I won't stop doing beautiful things and I won't do bad
things.' It's very noble. I'm very proud of that song because it's very much like out of
the world of Excalibur. To me, it's like Sir Lancelot or something - very noble and
chivalrous. That's my favorite song on the record - it's very ambitious.

Life Is A Lemon - Actually, one of my favorite parts of the album is
[during] Life Is A Lemon, the middle section, where everything is declared defective.
Yeah, I think everything is defective, basically. I think that's probably one of the
premises of life if you really look into it. Pretty much everything is defective and
everyone, on some level, is incompetent. Once you accept that, I think [life is] much more
peaceful. That song was very much, to me, a teenager's anthem. To me, you can still be a
teenager at any age. It's a certain sense of lack of proportion, which I really admire.

It Just Won't Quit - It Just Won't Quit is about the fact that there
are some things you never shake off. It's like the song 'Addicted To Love' - that's what
it's about. There's a key line in there: "Is it a blessing/Or is it a curse/Can it
get any better/Can it get any worse." And my favorite line: "Is it richer than
diamonds/Or just a little cheaper than spit/I don't know what it is/But it just won't
quit." That's love, I guess.

Objects In The Rearview Mirror - The hardest song to write and get
across was the song Objects In The Rearview Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are. It was
really gruesomely hard to write - in fact, it was the last song I wrote for the record,
which was basically done. [The record label] just wanted to stop, they wanted to put it
out. And I insisted, I really wanted to write another song. And that was a really
emotional song to write. It's a very passionate song. It's really, I think maybe, the most
passionate one on the record. I mean, I'm really proud of it because that's really one
that goes over-the-top in the sense that it's got images - it has religious imagery of
resurrection, it's got images of fertility and rebirth, it has really very good sexual
images, images of cars - which I always like.

Good Girls Go To Heaven - To me it's like a teenage prayer - "It
ain't right it ain't fair/Castles fall in the sand/And we fade in the air/And the good
girls go to heaven/But the bad girls go everywhere."